Town Square

Ad Libs: Why black and white?

Original post made
by Rebecca Wallace, arts & entertainment editor of the Palo Alto Weekly,
on Oct 16, 2012

Why black and white? Why not, if you can make a ceiling lamp look like a marvelous stained-glass fractal without any color?

Fine-art photographer Cole Thompson, he of the lamp fractals, will address that very question in a talk on Oct. 24 at the Palo Alto Children's Theatre. The Palo Alto Camera Club is bringing him in to speak about his philosophies and techniques, and perhaps about the black-and-white world he grew up in.

The image above is very much part of the modern world. It depicts a ceiling lamp that Thompson shot in a Minneapolis Ikea in 2010, a photo that's part of his striking series. "The first time I really noticed a ceiling lamp was in a hotel lobby in Uniontown, Ohio,"Thompson wrote on his website. "I was intrigued by how it looked when I stood directly below it; from that perspective it was an abstract kaleidoscope and didn't resemble the functional object that I had viewed from the side.As I lay on the lobby floor, studying the lamp, I decided to produce this portfolio."